Teaching children to value their lives

Guest Author - Chinedum Ify Obikili

No artist is pleased to see his/her works despised or unappreciated. God is not happy when we disrespect our bodies and treat our lives with carelessness. Children should be thought that their life is a gift from God, and God expects them to take care of it. You cannot continue to abuse your body by ingesting harmful stuff into it, in whatever manner and expect God not to feel bad about it. Again, why do you suppose hard drugs have the power to interfere with your body system, destroy every important vessels, either leave us helpless or worst still cut short our life span? The reason is simple; God did not design our bodies to house these harmful substances. These substances are unfriendly foreigners in your body, and so they make you sick. The more you toy around these bad substances, the more indebted you are to it, because it gradually takes over your life and subject you to its dictates. There is no better way to describe drugs and children should be made to understand this.
Our, teens and young adults are obviously in a hurry to grow up. Which is why seem to have more cases of substance abuse among teenagers these days. School children want to experiment, undergraduates are gradually migrating from prescription drug abuse to something higher.
We have to help our kids believe in themselves. Most times, timidity, shyness or fear could make our young kids feel inadequate and a need to prove themselves. We must make our children understand that the only way they can prove themselves is by being responsible children.

Again, kids who feel out of place in school, find it difficult to get along with other kids at school or can't get into the circle of the cool and popular guys at school, may have their egos or esteems crushed repeatedly. These ones feel like they should do something to prove they can also belong. Usually, they try out acting weird and rebellious to get attention, and then they want to try out some harmful behavior. I've heard about cases of teenage girls drinking alcohol to get their boyfriend's approval. At a stage when children desperately need to be accepted among their peers, our young girls would want to do anything to be identified as cool. It is our duty as parents to recognize when our kids are showing signs of emotional stress and step in before things get out of control.